The following quote from the novel illustrates this quite well, “time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels, only when the clock stops does time come to life” (Faulkner 104).įaulkner tries to dismantle the distinction between the past, the present, and the future. The existence of clocks and other forms of measuring time perpetuate this illusion. In other words, according to Sartre, Faulkner is trying to break out of the artificially created the illusion of linearity of time (Sartre 229). The broken chronology is not how Faulkner delivers his vision of the world – it is his vision of the world. Sartre’s thesis is in that essay is that the non-chronological narrative in the Sound and Fury is not merely a matter of style or aesthetic preferences but the fundamental elements of the novel’s content (Sartre 229). To grasp the significance of Faulkner’s work for the 20 th-century literature, one only needs to consider the fact that one of the best-known philosophers of that century, Jean-Paul Sartre, was profoundly interested in the novel Sound and Fury and wrote a very influential piece of criticism on it. In this paper, I will try to present Sartre’s view that Faulkner’s narrative technique illustrates his idea about time and Doreen Fowler’s Lacanian interpretation of the character of Caddy in Sound and Fury. However, his narrative style has always been characterized as notoriously difficult, and for that reason, most readers can enjoy his splendid language and cultural imagery but remain unable to grasp the key messages of his texts.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |